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noun
Shelf  n.  (pl. shelves)  
1.
(Arch.) A flat tablet or ledge of any material set horizontally at a distance from the floor, to hold objects of use or ornament.
2.
A sand bank in the sea, or a rock, or ledge of rocks, rendering the water shallow, and dangerous to ships. "On the tawny sands and shelves." "On the secret shelves with fury cast."
3.
(Mining) A stratum lying in a very even manner; a flat, projecting layer of rock.
4.
(Naut.) A piece of timber running the whole length of a vessel inside the timberheads.
To lay on the shelf, to lay aside as unnecessary or useless; to dismiss; to discard.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shelf" Quotes from Famous Books



... safely fastened in the pantry enjoying her green tea and Boston crackers, she would be startled with the words, "That must have an excellent relish!" and looking up, she would spy Sal, cosily seated on the top shelf, eyeing her movements complacently, and offering, perhaps, to assist her if she found the tea ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... New Year's morning, and perhaps, if he sent that letter ... He stood quite still for a moment, staring at it; then suddenly he threw his cigarette into the fire and snatched the letter down from the shelf. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... the hearth, shining and dancing over the ceiling and the floor and the walls, cutting queer capers with the big rocking-chair,—which turned into a giant with long arms,—and with the little figures on the mantel-shelf, and the books in their cases, softening and glorifying the two grand faces hanging in their frames opposite, and giving just light enough below them to let you read "John Brown" and "Phillips," if you had any occasion to read, and did not know those whom the world ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... in and dropped the flap behind him. Then he stepped to a shelf and took down a roll of paper which he spread upon the table. Howard looking at it with lack-lustre eyes saw that it was a sort of geological chart of the neighbourhood. Longstreet set his finger upon a point where he had made ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... be no intensity of cleaving to Jesus Christ. If you do not know that you are ill, you will not take the medicine. If you do not believe that the house is on fire, you will not mind the escape. The life-buoy lies unnoticed on the shelf above the berth as long as the sea is calm and everything goes well. Unless you have been down into the depths of your own heart, and seen the evil that is there, you will not care for the redeeming Christ, nor will you grasp Him as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... wine. Yet the total had mounted up in spite of all forbearance, and Miss Joliffe was at this moment reminded of its gravity by the gold-foil necks of three bottles of the universally-appreciated Duc de Bentivoglio brand, which still projected from a shelf above her head. Of Dr Ennefer's account she scarcely dared even to think; and there was perhaps less need of her doing so, for he never sent it in, knowing very well that she would pay it as she could, and being ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... was valuable, he built a house close under a bluff, where a projecting shelf of rock covered a small grotto, which he enlarged with pick and shovel. Before the rainy season set in, he had a comfortable house. They had a store of provisions enough to last for two years, and, in addition, John ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... belonged to no other mortal mixture. Even a handful of walnuts that were brought from the depths of her mysterious closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other walnuts could approach. The little shelf of books that hung suspended by cords against her wall was sacred in our regard; the volumes were like no other books; and we supposed that she derived from them those stores of knowledge on all subjects which she unconsciously dispensed among us,—for she was always telling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... the shelf of the sandy cove Beach-peas blossom late. By copse and cliff the swallows rove Each calling to his mate. Seaward the sea-gulls go, And the land-birds all are here; That green-gold flash was a vireo, And yonder flame where the marsh-flags grow Was ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody

... both came out again, and Nan went to a shelf and brought some rather fat bacon and bread, and a knife and fork with black handles. There were two beds—one in the back part of the van and one in the front. Jimmy sat down on the one in the front to eat his supper, ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb

... turnips, which got a little smoked, and didn't taste very good,—perhaps, however, that was because it was desiccated. I enjoyed the dinner tremendously; and after it was over, and my dishes were all washed and put away, my eye lighted upon a box, half full of cigars, on the shelf. My first thought was, "Now I will have a cigar, as the gentlemen do that you see at the steps of the Tremont House in the afternoon, and that will make it seem more like home." But, upon second ...
— John Whopper - The Newsboy • Thomas March Clark

... and illusions are generally due to this, that we accept as final a manner of expression essentially provisional. They are due to our bringing into the domain of speculation a procedure made for practice. If I choose a volume in my library at random, I may put it back on the shelf after glancing at it and say, "This is not verse." Is this what I have really seen in turning over the leaves of the book? Obviously not. I have not seen, I never shall see, an absence of verse. I have seen prose. But as it is poetry I want, I express what I find as a function ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... that Frank had made the big centre-table of plank, and the book-shelves as well. "He likes to tinker at such things," she said. "Whenever he gets blue or cross I set him to shifting the dresser or making a book-shelf, and he cheers up like mad. He's a regular kid anyway—always doing the things he ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... up in the side walls, and an extract shaft warmed by the chimney flue keeps up a circulation of air through the room: the door is usually at one end of the room and the fireplace at the opposite end: over each man's bed is a locker and shelf where he keeps his kit, and his rifle stands near the head of his bed. Convenient of access from the door to the barrack-room is the ablution-room with basins and foot-bath; also disconnected by a lobby is a water-closet and urinal for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... manufacture a fruit jar, for preserving fruit, with a top that screws on. Those jars look nice when the fruit is put up in them, and the house-wife feels as though she was repaid for all her perspiration over a hot stove, as she looks at the glass jars of different berries, on the shelf in the cellar. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... chimney-corner, that brightens day with the possibility of divine encounters, and darkens night with intimations of demonic ambushes, is of other substance than one which we take down from our bookcase, sapless as the shelf it stood on, and remote from all present sympathy with man or nature as a town history. It is something like the difference between live metaphor and dead personification. Primarily, the action of the imagination is the same in the mythologizer ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... unburdened his wrath for the inefficients who had lost the foresail, and sympathized with the sail-makers for the extra work thrown upon them. Then he asked permission to borrow one of my books, and, clinging to my bunk, selected Buchner's Force and Matter from my shelf, carefully wedging the empty space with the doubled magazine I use for ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... human habitation, not even a rope, or chain, or hook, to intimate that it was a customary shelter for a boat. The fusee went out quickly, and he lit another. Looking more carefully and closely about him, he perceived on a projecting shelf of rock, a small antique lamp, Etruscan in shape, made of iron and wrought with curious letters. There was oil in it, and a half-burnt wick; it had evidently been recently used. He availed himself at once of this useful adjunct to his explorations, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... English by readoption; and till we can prove that Kotzebue, or any of the whole breed of Kotzebues, whether dramatists or romantic writers or writers of romantic dramas, were ever admitted to any other shelf in the libraries of well-educated Germans than were occupied by their originals . . . in their mother country, we should submit to carry our own brat on ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... know everything and go everywhere, according as they have patent leather pumps or burst boots. They are to be met one day leaning against the mantel-shelf in a fashionable drawing room, and the next seated in the arbor of some suburban dancing place. They cannot take ten steps on the Boulevard without meeting a friend, and thirty, no matter where, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... obstacle in the old Wooster way. I had secured an abundance of the necessary spirit, and it was now lying in its flask in the drawer of the dressing-table. I had also ascertained that the jug, duly filled, would be standing on a shelf in the butler's pantry round about the hour of one. To remove it from that shelf, sneak it up to my room, and return it, laced, in good time for the midday meal would be a task calling, no doubt, for address, but in no sense an ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... there by a shop-front dimly lighted He suddenly stopped as though affrighted, Stopped and stared with his deep gaze centred On something seen, like a dream's illusion, Through the streaming glass, mid the queer confusion Of objects littered on shelf and floor, And about the counter and by the door— And then with his ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... then a rebellious muttering that should have warned Windy. It had once burst into an open quarrel in which the victor of a hundred battles withdrew defeated from the field. Windy, half-drunk, had taken an old account book from a shelf in the kitchen, a relic of his days as a prosperous merchant when he had first come to Caxton, and had begun reading to the little family a list of names of men who, he claimed, had been the cause of ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... of defeat—of being defrauded of his self-justification, and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset Soames like the breath of a cold fog. Mechanically he reached up, took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl, reversed it, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... should be kept in an orderly way upon a shelf in the nursery or in a closet, never piled in a miscellaneous heap in the corner of the room. Children should select their toys and play with one thing at a time, which they should be taught to put away in its place before another is given. They should never ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt

... a creature to welcome to our hearth, not to our shelf, for she does not belong among the things that are doomed to ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... that even after she had presently lighted the tall candles on the mantel-shelf. This was all their illumination but the fire, and she had proceeded to it with a quiet dryness that yet left play, visibly, to her implication between them, in their trouble and failing anything better, of the presumably ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... difficult of discovery. After an exhausting search, however, they were located on a top-most shelf, under the roof, in the file-room off from the gallery in the Patent Office building. The bundles are small and each is bandaged as were the Indian Office files, originally. The bandage, or wrapper, is labelled according to the contents. ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... would soon throw everything into confusion by grouping instead of classifying things. This country is full of most valuable minerals, and the people know as much about them as a pudding does of the plums contained in it. Observe this shelf, Sir, there are specimens of seven different kinds of copper on it; and on this one, fragments of four kinds of lead. In the argentiferous galena is a very considerable proportion of silver. Here is a piece of a mineral called molybdena of singular beauty, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... her large dark eyes at the handsome stranger, and felt a wonderful curiosity to know what the letter to C. L. could possibly be about; meanwhile mine hostess, raising her hand to a shelf on which stood an Indian slop-basin, the great ornament of the bar at the Golden Fleece, brought from its cavity ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... waiting. It was a glaring, stuffy cubbyhole ventilated by means of the hall door and a tiny window opening from the lavatory at the rear. Along the sides ran mirrors, beneath which was fixed a wide make-up shelf. From the ceiling depended several unshaded incandescent globes which flooded the place with a desert heat and radiance. An attempt had been made to give the room at least a semblance of coolness by hanging an attractively ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... small hut had been erected against the side of the rock, in a manner that presented an oblique angle. Care had been taken to surround it with such natural objects as left little reason to apprehend that its real character could be known by any who did not absolutely mount to the difficult shelf on which it stood. Light entered into this primitive and humble abode by a window that looked into the ravine, and a low door opened on the side next the valley. The construction was partly of stone and partly of logs, with a roof of bark and a chimney of mud ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... still, staring about him, and saw only the green-tinted water sliding by under the uncertain light, and the pines on the other side growing a trifle plainer through the mist. Turning, he hastened along the shingle until a shelf of rock shut it in, and then back to the tent again. Alton laid down the axe, for there was something in his comrade's face ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... Sunday—I was only eight years old—I took from the book-shelf a volume lettered SHAKSPEARE. It was not the first time I had looked at it, but before I had been deterred from attempting to read, by the broken appearance along the page, and preferred smooth narrative. But ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... negro to take his horse. Into the house he went, into the only habitable room. It was at best a desolate abode; the walls were bare, the floor was rotting, but about him he cast a look of helpless affection, at the bed, at a shelf whereon a few books were piled. He opened a closet and took therefrom a faded carpet-bag and into it he put Rousseau's Confessions, then an old book on logic, and then he hesitated and looked up at the shelf. All were dear to him, these ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... of which I could not discern, and bundles of old clothes and canvas bags, and compass-boxes in and about the cases, and hanging from the ceiling; while a tarry, fishy, strong shippy odour pervaded the room. I was particularly struck with the model of a ship fully rigged on a shelf over the mantelpiece; but she also was as much covered with dust as the ship in which the ancient mariner went to sea would have been, after he had shot the albatross, could any dust have reached her. I observed all these things while ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... greatly mistaken, for they stood quietly waiting for their glasses to be filled, alert, but with an air of perfect indifference. Some eight or ten glasses were set down and filled, when Murphy, snatching a couple of bottles from the shelf behind the bar, handed them out to his men, crying, "Here, ye bluddy thaves, lave ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... coloured croton bushes, stands the men's house—the "gamal." Strong pillars support its gabled roof, that reaches down to the ground; the entrance is flanked by great stone slabs. Oddly branched dead trees form a hedge around the house, and on one side, on a sort of shelf, hang hundreds of boars' jaws with curved tusks. Inside, there are a few fireplaces, simple holes in the ground, and a number of primitive stretchers of parallel bamboos, couches that the most ascetic of whites would disdain. Among the beams of the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... door to a shelf and brought forth an object that Janice recognized. It was the big white envelope containing the ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... said to have been exceedingly able; the division was better for the Cornites, and worse for their antagonists, than had been expected; the decision received with great indifference, and the question put on the shelf for some time. ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... defending himself as best he could from a small domestic storm. In his anxiety to have that dark room fixed just the way Luck wanted it, Andy had purloined a shelf which Rosemary needed, and which she meant to have, if words could restore it to its place behind the kitchen stove. Andy had the shelf down and was taking out bent nails with a new hammer when Luck came ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... and we kept on till the leader suddenly turned into a gloomy niche on our left, out of which another stream rushed; and here for some time we had to climb from rock to rock, and often drag ourselves on to some shelf by the overhanging roots of trees. The ascent was wonderfully steep, and sometimes so narrow that we were in a dim twilight with the sky far away above us, like a jagged line of light. As for the stream in whose bed we were, it was a succession of tiny falls now, and we were soon ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn

... down. In the morning, the honey being wanted, the pot was found with a considerable portion abstracted. Outside of it was a heap of mortar reaching to the edge, forming an inclined plane, while inside a similar structure had been raised with the loose plaster. From the marks on the shelf, it was clearly the work of a mouse; which had thus, by means of a well-designed ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston

... the wheelwright managed to send the boy six florins, and that sum was immediately expended on Fux's Gradus ad Parnassum and Mattheson's Volkommener Capellmeister—heavy, dry treatises both, which have long since gone to the musical antiquary's top shelf among the dust and the cobwebs. These "dull and verbose dampers to enthusiasm" Haydn made his constant companions, in default of a living instructor, and, like Longfellow's "great men," toiled upwards in the night, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... the party assembled had been wholly bent upon pleasure. The ladies' cabin was divided by a staircase; but there were what, in a sort of mockery, are called "state-cabins" opening into that appropriated to the general use, around which were sofas, and bed-places upon a sort of shelf above, for the accommodation of the gentlemen. This apartment was handsomely carpeted, and otherwise well furnished; the steward and his assistant having the appearance of the better class of waiters belonging to a well-frequented hotel: all the servants were English, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... In front of the window stood a writing-table on which there were some books—perhaps Baudelaire, George, Rilke. Near it and on it lay sheets of paper, which were apparently covered with finished and unfinished poems and treatises. On a shelf at a window stood volumes of Goethe, Shakespeare, a Bible, and a translation of Homer. On the table and chairs lay perhaps newspapers and pieces of clothing. Somewhere lay yellowed photos of old people ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... journey, climbing more steeply now, until, when the sun was low, they quit the stream-bed and made through the forest towards the shoulder of an untimbered ridge that ran down into the valley. And there, high up on the edge of the spruce, they selected a mossy shelf ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... speech, floated from the open windows of the theatre across to this quiet corner, at which there seemed to be a smile of some sort upon the marble features of Jude; while the old, superseded, Delphin editions of Virgil and Horace, and the dog-eared Greek Testament on the neighbouring shelf, and the few other volumes of the sort that he had not parted with, roughened with stone-dust where he had been in the habit of catching them up for a few minutes between his labours, seemed to pale to a sickly cast at the sounds. The bells struck out joyously; and their reverberations ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... However, at the other end of the large room there stood a screen near one of the many lounges, and I was on the point of approaching this place of concealment when Sinclair drew me toward a tall cabinet upon whose glass doors the firelight was shimmering, and, pointing to a shelf far above our ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... volumes dear to a collector's heart. But none of them, so far as I could see, gave any evidence of having been lately handled; and anxious to waste no time on puerile details, I hastily quitted my chair, and was proceeding to turn my attention elsewhere, when I noticed on an upper shelf, a book projecting slightly beyond the others. Instantly my foot was on the chair and the book in my hand. Did I find it of interest? Yes, but not on account of its contents, for they were pure Greek to me; but because ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... miserable, the girl cried herself to sleep. Bill sat beside her a long time, and the snow sifted down in the forest and the silence lay over the land. He left her at last, and for a while was busy among the supplies that he found on a shelf behind the stove. And she wakened to find him ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... to me, "there is nothing more but books. I will pass them to you. Pile them up in a corner until I can have a book-shelf made." ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... of zinc to the zinc cup proper. This action, however, is slight in the better grades of cells. As a result of this, and also of the gradual drying out of the moisture within the cell, these cells gradually deteriorate even when not in use—this is commonly called shelf-wear. Shelf-wear is much more serious in the very small sizes of dry cells ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... surface—like himself; For all corrupted things are buoyed like corks,[565] By their own rottenness, light as an elf, Or wisp that flits o'er a morass: he lurks, It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf, In his own den, to scrawl some "Life" or "Vision,"[ht] As ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... and induce sleep I clutched again and again the rum bottle, hugged my enemy, and poured the infernal fluid down my parched throat. But it was no use, none; I could not sleep. Then I bethought me of tobacco; and staggering from my bed to a shelf near by, with great difficulty I managed to procure a pipe and some matches. I could not stand to light the latter, so I lay again on the bed, and scraped one on the wall. I began to smoke, and the narcotic leaf produced ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... "flat back" one, the rounding is very slight. It is necessary even in the case of a flat back book to round it somewhat so that it will retain its shape when the finished book is placed on the shelf. After the rounding, the top, or "head," and the bottom, or "tail," of the book are trimmed evenly in the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... at any rapid, and only once did our boat get entangled with any other. Towards sundown we were abreast of the fine pagoda of Suifu, and a little later were at the landing. The city is on a high, level shelf of land with high hills behind it. It lies in the angle of bifurcation formed by the Yangtse river (here known as the "River of Golden Sand"), going west, and the Min, or Chentu river, going north to Chentu, the capital city of the province. I landed below the southern ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... pulpit, taking out the Bible that lay on the shelf, lighting a candle, glancing uneasily at the old man on the steps. He never had feared to meet his eye before. He turned to the fly-leaf, holding it to the candle. What odd fancy made him want to read the uncouth, blotted words written there? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... has no time fer hate, Out fishin'; He isn't eager to be great, Out fishin'. He isn't thinkin' thoughts of pelf, Or goods stacked high upon a shelf, But he is ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest

... in this gentle mood that John reached to the shelf above his head and took down the paper. He opened it, and Denas in her pretty dancing dress, with her bare arms lifted above her head, looked her father full in the face. She was laughing; she ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... window only two feet wide allowed the afternoon sunshine to print upon the bare floor the shadow of longitudinal iron bars fastened into the stone sills. A narrow bedstead, merely a low black cot of interlacing iron straps, stood against the eastern side, and opposite, a broad shelf, also of iron, ran along the walls and held a tin ewer and basin, a few books, and a pile of clothing ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... from the rectory without appearing to do so. He rose as he spoke and went toward the clergyman, who was probably much younger than he looked. For he was ill-dressed and ill-shorn, with straggling grey hair hanging to his collar. He had a musty look, such as a book may have that is laid on a shelf in a deserted room and never opened or read. Septimus Marvin, the world would say, had been laid upon a shelf when he was inducted to the spiritual cure of Farlingford. But no man is ever laid on a shelf by Fate. He climbs ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... are so very small, You have not learned to read at all. Yet never a printed book withstands The urgence of your dimpled hands. So, though this book is for yourself, Let mother keep it on the shelf Till you can read. O days that Pass, That day will ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... it to bleed. It is of a dark purplish hue, and filled with spongy, sensitive granulations. It discharges a thin, bloody matter which is sometimes very fetid and acrid, and excoriates the tissues if it comes in contact with them. The edges of this species of ulcer are shelf-like and ragged, and turn inward. The adjacent structures are red and swollen. Very often they are attended by severe constitutional disturbances, such as chills, fever, and great nervous prostration ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... put some picture straight or move some ornament from one position to another. The books that stretched along one wall from floor to ceiling were arranged most carefully according to their subjects. He disliked to see some books projecting further from the shelf than others, and, with a little smile of protest, as though he were giving them a kindly scolding, he would push ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... whitewashed cell of stone, musty with the dampness which had swept in from the sea during the night. It was furnished with Spartan simplicity. Neither image, crucifix, nor painting adorned its walls—the occupant's dress alone suggested his calling. A hanging shelf held a few books, all evidently used as texts in the adjoining college. A table, much littered; a wooden dressing stand, with a small mirror; and an old-fashioned, haircloth trunk, bearing numerous foreign labels, eked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... sensed in her surroundings. But it was not novels that filled the bookcase. They were books of sport and travel with several volumes on veterinary surgery. They were all in French, and had all been frequently handled, many of them had pencilled notes in the margins written in Arabic. One shelf was filled entirely with the works of one man, a certain Vicomte Raoul de Saint Hubert. With the exception of one novel, which Diana only glanced at hastily; they were all books of travel. From the few scribbled words in the front of each Diana could see that they had ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... on the table, he washed up the dishes. His meals he took, standing by the sink, a plate on the shelf before him, while he washed and chewed simultaneously. There were other tasks besides, tasks all of them more or less menial, all of them adding to the general drain upon his nerves and body. The rest of the time, his studies kept him busy. Indeed, it was no small ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... and Skirrl, the draw-in test was made by putting food on a shelf outside the cage, beyond the reach of the animal, and placing in the cage with the animal one or two sticks long enough to be used for drawing ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... afternoon he was doing something to his wheel, getting it in order for a long ride which he had planned for the next day. Edna stood watching him, ready to hand a tool or run for a piece of rag to be used in cleaning, or to fill the oil can from the bottle on the shelf upstairs. ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard

... chance threw books in his way, and inclination directed him through them. He used to mention one curious instance of his casual reading, when but a boy. Having imagined that his brother had hid some apples behind a large folio upon an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... my 'usband was never what you might call a religious man. He were more of a readin' man, my 'usband was—papers and books and all sorts o' things—more'n was good for 'im, I often used to say. You can see a lot on 'em on that little shelf. If it hadn't been that they kep' 'im out o' the Nag's Head I'd ha' burned some on 'em, that I would, and I often told 'im so. He knowed a wonderful lot about the stars, my 'usband did. Why, he'd often sit in his chair outside ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... It was all white. White. White tiles. Rows of little slender knives on a glass shelf, under glass, shining. A white sink in the corner. A mixed smell of iodine and ether. The surgeon wore a white coat. Harriett made her tight ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair

... your Cheese upside down, and continue turning it every Night and Morning till it shrinks from the Vat or Cheese Mote, and is stiff enough to take out without breaking, and then lay it upon the Shelf to be turn'd, and shift it Night and Morning till 'tis dry for use. This Mr. Foord tells me is the best sort of Cheese he ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... called, Bert and Eddie. This was nearly all she had learned, if we except the fact that the family ate with silver forks, and drank wine after dinner. This last, mother pronounced heterodox, while I, who dearly loved the juice of the grape and sometimes left finger marks on the top shelf, whither I had climbed for a sip from grandma's decanter, secretly hoped I should some day dine with Nellie Gilbert, and drink all the wine I wanted, thinking how many times I'd rinse my mouth so mother shouldn't smell ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... to the door an' hopped into the yard, an' not a livin' creature did I see; but there on the window-shelf was packages of salt, coffee, tea, and flour, and a half a dollar in silver! I run back in the house, white as a ghost myself, an' I cried out, 'Mother, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... to Audrey's taste. She walked to a shelf where Ted had put some bronzes, looked at them with a decided air of criticism, and arranged them differently. Having asserted her independence, she ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... business. In all secrecy he carried on a commerce, very considerable under the circumstances, in common watches and in mead, two kinds of wares that in sooth had no connection with each other. The watches had no particular attraction for a little boy, but the mead, which was kept in jars, on a shelf, appealed to me doubly. It was the beverage the old Northmen had loved so much that the dead drank it in Valhalla. It was astonishing that it could still be had. How nice it must be! I was allowed to taste it and it ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... little book called Paradise Lost that it was going to be used mostly during the nineteenth century to batter children's minds with, it is doubtful if he would ever have had the heart to write it. It does not damage a book very much to let it lie on a wooden shelf little longer than it ought to. But to come crashing down into the exquisite filaments of a human brain with it, to use it to keep a brain from continuing to be a brain—that is, an organ with all its reading senses acting and reacting warm and living ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... and it was only blind instinct that prompted me to head down-stream diagonally to cut off the approaching canoe; but I answered the Colonel's shout with an excited cry, and drove the horse headlong at a shelf of rock. I felt his hoofs slipping on its mossy covering, there was a strident clang of iron on stone, and then with a sudden splash we were in the torrent together. Caesar must have felt the bottom beneath ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... proved, in spite of their threatening appearance much less difficult than we had anticipated, so that in a few minutes the lad had climbed to the level of the top of the falls, where he stood on a broad shelf, and by the help of the rope hauled up our baskets ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn

... invitation receives from so many of us! Some of you never hear it at all. Standing in the very focus where the sounds converge, you are deaf, as if a man behind the veil of the falling water of Niagara, on that rocky shelf there, should hear nothing. From every corner of the universe that voice comes; from all the providences and events of our lives that voice comes; from the life and death of Jesus Christ that voice comes; and not a sound reaches your ears. 'Having ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... with as many windows looking out to sea as a lighthouse, and had had an especial interest for Georgina, since she heard someone say that its owner, Mr. Milford, was an old bachelor who lived by himself. She used to wonder when she was younger if "all the bread and cheese he got he kept upon a shelf." Once she asked Barbara why he didn't "go to London to get him a wife," and was told probably because he had so many guests that there wasn't time. Interesting people were always coming and going about the house; men famous for things they had done ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... amuse his mind with reading. But one day when Mr. Welbore Ellis was in his library, he heard him say, with tears in his eyes, after having taken up several books and at last thrown away a folio just taken down from a shelf, "Alas! it is all in vain; I cannot read."' Prior's Malone, p. 379. Lord Eldon, after his retirement, said to an inn-keeper who was thinking of giving up business:—'Believe me, for I speak from ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... away, as though he were afraid of waking her. He returned to his closet, and having recorded his wife's last words to him, he poured into his bath the water that had been brought up in accordance with his orders. The water being too hot for him to get into the bath at once, he took down from the shelf his copy of Suetonius. He wished to read how Seneca had died. He opened the book at random. 'But dwarfs,' he read, 'he held in abhorrence as being lusus naturae and of evil omen.' He winced as though he had been struck. This same Augustus, he remembered, had exhibited in the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... light where it was for precaution, groped his way to the cabinet, which he knew so well. He opened it, felt for the bottom shelf, and, to his great joy, found what he looked for. As a thief escapes with his booty, the duke rushed into the next room with his prey. Ten o'clock struck; the duke thought of his hourly visitors, and hid his ladder under a cushion, on which he ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... of darkness, with his Shoes of swiftness, and was there as soon as she; by reason of his Coat they could not see him. When she entered the place, she gave the handkerchief to old Lucifer, who laid it carefully upon a shelf, from whence Jack brought it to his master, who showed it to the lady the next day. The next night she saluted the King's son, telling him he must show her to-morrow morning the lips that she kissed last this night, or ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... plates, that, if you were to see them, would tempt you to cut them out and steal them, all sunk and lost like dead ships under the sand: piles of monographs. There are warehouses in London that are choked to the beams of the roof with them, and every fresh exploration furnishes another shelf-load. The source of the Nile was unknown a very few years ago, and now, I have no doubt, there are dozens of monographs on the flowers that flourish there. Indeed, there is not a thing that grows that may not furnish a monograph. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... gathered at the Capitol, numbering some 700,000, exclusive of manuscripts, maps, and the products of the graphic arts, also of great volume and value, only about 300,000 volumes, or less than half the collection, are provided with shelf room. The others, which are increasing at the rate of from twenty-five to thirty thousand volumes a year, are not only inaccessible to the public, but are subject to serious damage and deterioration from other ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... yards long by three wide. There was just room to pass between the camp bedstead and the small deal table standing against the opposite wall. Besides this furniture, there was one chair, an empty wooden box turned up on end, with a tin basin on it—that was his washstand—a little shelf fixed on the wall, and on the little shelf a tin mug, a tin plate, a pot of salt, a small loaf of black bread, and a Bible. The walls were painted brown, and the window, fitted with ground glass, was high up near the ceiling; it was barred on the outside, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... in the plough, who first the vine Did nourish tenderly, and chose good grapes, That rare old wine may pass from sire to son! Peace! who doth keep the plow and harrow bright, While rust on some forgotten shelf devours The cruel soldier's useless sword and shield. From peaceful holiday with mirth and wine The rustic, not half sober, driveth home With wife and weans upon ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... the island I passed a forlorn little shrine. It was merely a rough shed with a wide shelf at the back, on which stood a row of worn and dusty figures, decked with the clothes of children whose recovery was supposed to have been due to their influence. It was raining and the shelter was full of children playing in the company of an old crone ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... exclaimed. "What is this? Hallo, a tobaccy-box! An' what's this on it? Let me see. Two letters—a 'P' and an 'M.' 'P.M.'—arrah, what can that be for? Well, divil may care. Let it lie on the shelf there. Here now, none of your cross looks. I say, put these cobwebs to your face, and they'll stop the bleedin'. And now good-night to you, an' let that be a warnin' to you not to raise your ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... reverse of luxurious. A wooden bench, destitute of back, and shiny from the friction of dear knows how many restless sitters; a sloping desk, cut and carved by careless knives, and having underneath an open shelf upon which the books, slate, cap, and lunch might be put—that was the sum total. Yet, after all, what more do schoolboys really need, or can be safely ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley

... Ireland; Gibraltar question with Spain; Argentina claims Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas); Argentina claims South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; Mauritius claims island of Diego Garcia in British Indian Ocean Territory; Rockall continental shelf dispute involving Denmark, Iceland, and Ireland (Ireland and the UK have signed a boundary agreement in the Rockall area); territorial claim in Antarctica ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... glass window opposite to the door, and a shelf, holding a Bible, Prayer and hymn book, and two others, one religious, and one secular, from the library. A rust-coloured jacket, with a black patch marked with white numbers, and a tarpaulin hat, crossed with two lines of red paint ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Fritz kept his garden-tools and his skates, and all the big boy things which Baby too hoped to have of his own some day? No, it was not there. It must have been—yes, it was in the pantry when he went to ask James for a glass of water. Up on a shelf, high up it stood, "a tiny sweet little t'unk," said Herr Baby to himself, "wouldn't mother let him have it?" He would ask her this morning as soon as he saw her. Then he lay still and thought over to himself all the things he would ...
— The Adventures of Herr Baby • Mrs. Molesworth

... it could be so called—was merely the track or furrow of some fallen tree dragged, by accident or design, diagonally across the sides of the mountain. At times it appeared scarcely a foot in width; at other times a mere crumbling gully, or a narrow shelf made by the projections of dead boughs and collected debris. It seemed perilous for a foot passenger, it appeared impossible for a horse. Nevertheless, he had taken a step forward when Clinch laid his hand ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... candle will be nicer and cleaner, uncle, and answer the same purpose. There's one on the mantle-shelf. Let me ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... Rockall continental shelf dispute involving Iceland and the UK (Ireland and the UK have signed a boundary agreement in the Rockall area); dispute with Iceland over the Faroe Islands fisheries median line boundary within 200 NM; disputes with Iceland, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Tom, as he entered the dining-room where the rest of the family were at breakfast. "To-morrow Hugh will be gone,—to-morrow Estella Camilla Wales must pine in vain for her mistress, who will be engrossed in decimal fractions, and to-morrow I must take down from the dusty shelf that dismal old Latin Prose. I wonder who cares for ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March

... room to a shelf above the serried volumes of Sam Carr's library, lifted the cover of a tin tobacco box and took out a letter. This she gave to Thompson. Then she sat down cross-legged on the wolfskin beside her youngster, looking up at her visitor impassively, her ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... his senses passed away. On returning to himself, he could not stir a joint; he was as if surrounded with a glistening brightness, on which he struck if he but tried to lift his hand or move otherwise.—Alas! He was sitting in a well-corked crystal bottle, on a shelf, in the library ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... of what afterwards became strongely marked characteristics. Wagner himself never saw 'Die Feen' performed. In 1833 he could not persuade any German manager to produce it, and, in the changes which soon came over his musical sympathies, 'Die Feen' was laid upon the shelf and probably forgotten. It was not until 1888, five years after the composer's death, that the general enthusiasm for everything connected with Wagner induced the authorities at Munich to produce it. Since then it has ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... disagreeable. Whole nations may eat cabbage, or stale fish, while I like neither. Ultimately, therefore, every reader must make his own selection, and find the book that finds him. Any one not a random reader will soon select a short shelf of books that he may like better than a longer shelf that exactly suits some one else. Either will be a shelf of good books, neither a shelf of the best books, since if best for you or me, they may not be ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... clove apple and a nautilus shell that had graced the parlor shelf; then a little daintily dressed rag doll with cheeks stained pink with cranberry juice appeared. When young Lucretia spied this last she made a little grab ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... discovery on his side of a big nurse-shark which was rolling an eye at him from the ocean's floor. John pointed out, from the bow, a great school of fish numbering possibly ten thousand, which Mr. Choate stated were small mangrove-snappers. They were parading up and down a stretch of coral shelf along the bottom, and they made a wild dash and hid in crannies under the coral as a big barracuda unexpectedly shot into their midst ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser

... Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line. She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted; Miss Temple embraced ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... wives. There were four of them now, a fifth to come in a few months. There should be a third servant, he knew, if they were to live "like other people." With a gesture that said, "Oh, Hell!" he jumped from his chair and took down a volume of verse from the pine shelf above the mantel and lighted a cigarette. For a few minutes he might lose himself and forget the fret of life, in the glowing pictures of things ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... If you desire to know what he is like, I refer you to an old water-colour sketch of a weak-faced, washed-out-looking young man, with handsome features, and a high-collared coat, which you will find in an old portfolio upstairs, on the top shelf of the wardrobe, in the lumber-room. It was done by Grace's own hand, a portrait of her brother, and presented to me in those days. It has lain in ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... my son," Mrs. Holt said rather breathlessly, "that I would take a peep and see if I had forgot to put your extra covers on the shelf." ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... and I'm not nervous," I heard a laugh of mischief come from behind a second and short green curtain, that veils the lower of the sleeping shelves, just as I fell onto my shelf above and lay ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Flutter Wheel Fan Fan Patch Fan and Rainbow Ferris Wheel Flower Pot Hour Glass Ice Cream Bowl Log Patch Log Cabin Necktie Needle Book New Album Pincushion and Burr Paving Blocks Pickle Dish Rolling Pinwheel Rolling Stone Sashed Album Shelf Chain Snowflake Snowball Stone Wall Sugar Loaf Spools Shield Scissor's Chain Square Log Cabin The Railroad The Disk The Globe The Wheel Tile Patchwork Watered Ribbon ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster

... out behind the house, and cried like a fine fellow! When tired of this, I returned to the kitchen, sat by the fire, and brooded over my hard lot. I was too hungry to sleep. While I sat in the corner, I caught sight of an ear of Indian corn on an upper shelf of the kitchen. I watched my chance, and got it, and, shelling off a few grains, I put it back again. The grains in my hand, I quickly put in some ashes, and covered them with embers, to roast them. All this I{43} did at the risk of getting a brutual thumping, for Aunt Katy could beat, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... bone" was too rare, and afterwards because it was tough. Johnny dined on "coffee and sinkers" so that he could afford Bland's steak and "French fried" and hot biscuits and pie and two cups of coffee. The cat, he told himself grimly, was not content with a saucer of milk. It was on the top shelf of the pantry, lapping all the ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... barren ledges. The morning breeze swept, sharp and invigorating, out of a broad open space beyond the edge of this rocky woodland height. Eloise and I pushed on a little farther, leaving the others still on the narrow shelf above ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... Isom's fate reached the miller by way of Hazlan before the next noon. Several men in the Brayton cabin had recognized the boy in the moonlight. At daybreak they found bloodstains on the ledge and on a narrow shelf a few feet farther down. Isom had slipped from one to the other, they said, and in his last struggle had rolled over into Dead Creek, and had been swept ...
— The Last Stetson • John Fox Jr.

... gnawed my moustache, I tore my gloves off and then put them on again, I walked up and down the little drawing-room, I shifted the clock, which stood on the mantel-shelf; I could not keep still. I had already experienced such sensations on the morning of the assault on the Malakoff. Suddenly the General, who was still going on with his eternal game at ecarte with ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... they landed, Marongas, has two hills of volcanic conglomerate and vesicular lava, containing angular fragments embedded. The bottom was covered with living coral, of every variety, and of different colors; but there was nothing like a regular coral shelf, and the beach was composed of bits of coral intermixed with dead shells, both entire and comminuted. The center of the island was covered with mangrove-bushes; the hills were cones, but had no craters on them. The mangroves had grown ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... The place was rather pretty and even imposing at first glance, and it took several joint ballots for March and his wife to make sure that with the kitchen there were only six rooms. At every door hung a portiere from large rings on a brass rod; every shelf and dressing-case and mantel was littered with gimcracks, and the corners of the tiny rooms were curtained off, and behind these portieres swarmed more gimcracks. The front of the upright piano had what March called a short-skirted portiere on it, and the top was covered with vases, with dragon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... lit a candle on the shelf. He turned drunkenly towards Nickie, and beheld what must have been a strange and mysterious sight to a commonplace Dutchman in his own home. Sitting on a chair facing him, with the gin bottle raised to his lips, was a ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... worried because my bonnet seemed to be too large for me. A loud crash in the kitchen disturbed my dream, and Temperance rushed in, dragging my sister Veronica, whose hair was streaming with milk; she had pulled a panful over her from the buttery shelf, while Temperance was taking up the supper. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... took down a leaden platter from a shelf by the door, and, opening a cupboard, he took out a little glass bottle full of a clear amber-coloured liquid, which glowed like melted fire. Setting down the platter on a little round table in the middle of ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... of the joists and the boards that floor the bedroom above, is so low, that necessity, if not politeness, would compel you to take off your already- bruised hat. Some of these joists, you will find, are made further useful by supporting each a shelf, before which hangs a little curtain of printed cotton, concealing the few stores and postponed eatables of the house— forming, in fact, both store-room and larder of the family. On the walls hang several coloured prints, and within a deep glazed frame the figure of ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... a shudder, half-believing, half-sceptical, yet none the less with a strong distaste for the memory of the story I had just heard. I left Hilyard arranging the shelf of his cabinet, and opening the long French window I walked ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... consisting of a shelf supported on two legs and having on it offerings of bolos, daggers, lances, and necklaces, together with ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... spring of 1888, on his return from photographing the statues at Varallo, he found, to his disgust, that the authorities of the British Museum had removed Frost's Lives of Eminent Christians from its accustomed shelf in the Reading Room. Soon afterwards Harry Quilter asked him to write for the Universal Review and he responded with "Quis Desiderio . . . ?" In this essay he compares himself to Wordsworth and dwells on the points of resemblance between Lucy and the book ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones

... the Varietes after dinner; but before we left the house I slipped into du Bruel's room, and on a shelf among a pile of waste papers found the copy of the Petites-Affiches, in which, agreeably to the reformed law, notice of the purchase of the house was inserted. The words stared me in the face—'At the request of Jean Francois du Bruel and Claudine Chaffaroux, his wife——' Here ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac

... out from the surface of the grey paper in all the piteous futility of an appeal made too late. Glancing up, Mr. Brimsdown's eye rested on the shelf where the deed box of Robert Turold reposed, and he mechanically reflected that it would be necessary to have the word "Deceased" added to the white-lettered inscription on the black surface. Mr. Brimsdown sighed. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... besides, it might be said that she had the familiar features of womankind; but what it was that made those features so marvellous, ah! there was the task for a greater poet than I to take upon his shoulders. Even the great poet that loved her—and I keep his love-book on my shelf to this hour, wedged in between a regiment of the Fathers—even Dante has told us nothing that shall serve to make the ages yet to come understand what the woman was like that a man could love with so rapturous a madness of passion. Sometimes ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... communication with the outer world, that justified Lockhart and Moore in making a long story of the lives of Scott and Byron. Even here, among men of letters, who were also men of action and of great sociability, are not all biographies too long? Let any sensible reader turn to the shelf where his Lives repose; we shall be surprised if he does not find that nearly every one of them, taking the present century alone, and including such splendid and attractive subjects as Goethe, Hume, Romilly, Mackintosh, Horner, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley

... till that evening at six. Never mind. The station was a secure place to deposit the twins and the baggage in till she came. He wished he could deposit the twins in the parcel-room as easily as he could their grips—neatly labelled, put away safely on a shelf till called for. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... I clutched the shelf for support. Not only was it Alice speaking, but in the kindest voice imaginable. My anger passed, but my amazement at Alice and all her ways blinded me. If she had suddenly stepped through the wall, my surprise could not ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... conspicuously clean and covered by homemade crocheted spreads. Wide bands of hand-made insertion ornament the stiffly starched pillow slips. Against the wall is a plain oak dresser. Although the day is warm, two-foot logs burn on the age-worn andirons of the wide brick fire place. From the shelf above dangles a leather bag of "spills" ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... a printing-press, and one chair in the room; the table was littered with engraver's tools, copper plates, bottles of acid, packets of fibre paper, and photographic paraphernalia. A camera, a reading-lamp, and a dark-lantern stood on a shelf beside a nickel-plated ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... housemaid's work is considerably abridged: she throws open the windows of the several rooms not occupied as bedrooms, that they may receive the fresh morning air before they are occupied; she prepares the breakfast-room by sweeping the carpet, rubbing tables and chairs, dusting mantel-shelf and picture-frames with a light brush, dusting the furniture, and beating and sweeping the rug; she cleans the grate when necessary, and replaces the white paper or arranges the shavings with which it is filled, leaving everything clean and tidy for breakfast. It is not enough, however, in ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... another reason why Tode enjoyed his hotel life. He had discovered himself to be an epicure, and an amazing quantity of the good things of this life fell to his share—no, hardly that—but disappeared mysteriously from shelf and jar and box, and only grave, innocent-looking Tode could have told whither they went. Mince-pies, and cranberry-pies, and lemon-pies, and the whole long catalogue of pies, were equal favorites of his, and huge pieces ...
— Three People • Pansy

... engaged, the men, by diving; secured ropes to the heavier pieces of iron sections, and we saved several tons of her cargo, which we placed upon the steamer and upon my diahbeeah. This lightened the wreck, and we then prepared a bed for her by cutting away the abrupt bank, and forming a shelf on the flooded shore in a depth of three feet of water, upon which we might be able to haul her when floated to the surface. We laid out the steamer's purchase with an anchor secured upon the shore, and the day ended ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... includes poor Corder, who complained bitterly that his appearance of age made the fellows keep the tools from him; but when we were ordered to bring stones and turf, he joyfully carried burdens. The trench was dug about four feet deep, with an eighteen inch parapet outside. Inside this was a shelf for an elbow rest; the parapet was lined (revetted, the captain said) with flat stones, and finally the whole outside was turfed, so that the raw earth did not show. The turf was from ground opened in a long line higher up the hill, and left open to look like a trench and draw the enemy's ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... that plagy, jealous, suspicious, old vinegar-faced Honor, and her partner Pride—as penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint as herself—have the monopoly of the article. And what with the time they lose in adjusting their spectacles, hunting in the precise shelf for the precise quality demanded, then (quality found) the haggling as to quantum—considering whether it should be Apothecary's weight or Avoirdupois, or English measure or Flemish—and, finally, the hullaboloo ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... night; you go off to your bed, Bids you go to your sleep and not trouble your head; For wherever they're lying, in cupboard or shelf, 'Tis he will take care of ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... creed of their Anglican forefathers. The last thing, after which nothing could properly follow, the most important and most conspicuous of all, it represented to our Yankee Walton the crowning hope of his life,—the big bass, after taking which he might put hook-and-line on the shelf. By a slight transposition, natural enough to untrained ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... began to lay aside their wraps. "I can't picture myself sleeping on that funny little shelf," Peggy declared. "What if I should ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott

... anything about my pursuits, nor understood why I should be so zealous in pursuit of the objects which my friends, the middies, christened "Buffons," after the title conspicuous on a volume of the "Suites a Buffon," which stood on my shelf in the chart-room. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... of my heart and the delight of my eyes is my garden. Our house, which is in dimensions very much like a bird-cage, and might, with almost equal convenience, be laid on a shelf, or hung up in a tree, would be utterly unbearable in warm weather, were it not that we have a retreat out of doors,—and a very pleasant retreat it is. To make my readers fully comprehend it, I must describe ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... I found that the rock was very high; so that in a while I was come a great way off the earth, and yet was not come to the top of the rock. And because that I was awearied, I lookt about for a safe place to mine hand, and lo! there was a shelf of the rock very nigh, that went inward a ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson



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